http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/books/12/08/wkd.john.ashbery.ap/index.html
I just don’t get modern poetry and the first time I picked up Ashberry… I haven’t touched late 20th century poetry since. I guess I’m not alone, even the most pre-eminent of poets and scholars had a hard time too.
No, you’re not alone. My best friend completed his MFA in poetry at the writers workshop in Ohio and is now completing his Ph.D. in literature at Ohio State. I picked up some Ashberry on recommendation from someone else and asked my friend if he ever understood a single poem from him. His simple reply: “Nope.” Has anyone in your department get a hold on him? “Well, our Eliot scholar claims he’s ‘got’ Ashberry, but he can’t explain it.”
I felt relieved that I wasn’t as supremely stupid as I look.
More proof that modern art is a crime against humanity. Modern composers, writers, poets - they should be held as accountable for their atrocities as the Nazi regime was. Being artsy-fartsy and pretentious for its own sake is just wrong. (I’d like to head the procession to the electric chair myself, for writing this equally pretentious paragraph.)
Of course, I’ll look fondly back on 20th century ‘modern’ art as soon as 21st century crap starts spilling out. It’ll seem so clear and pleasant, like the first time I ‘got’ impressionism. :roll:
I was once on a bus and there was this skinny guy in black with horn-rimmed spectacles and he was reading a book called “Intellectuals.”
Don’t despair entirely, there’s always Phillip Levine.
I’m with Goebbels. If I can’t understand it, it should be killed:
“When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my gun.”
That quote is usually attributed to either Göring or Goebbels but it seems to have originated with Nazi poet Hanns Johst (see here and there).
Great quote, though. :)
Kultur was kind of a German buzzword during the first war, so much so that it was even used often by U.S. propaganda (the gorilla’s club):
So it had a bit of a different connotation back then.
Yes, that was the confrontation of supposedly superior German “Kultur” vs supposedly inferior Western (French/English/American) “Zivilisation”. And Oswald Spengler’s “Untergang des Abendlandes” (Decline of the West) famously used these terms as labels for different states of historical development.
Just to be clear, though, the Nazi quote Mark brought up has nothing to do with this usage. In this quote, “Kultur” is clearly meant to refer to intellectual high culture, i.e. what Spengler & Co would have termed “civilization” (or rather concrete examples of decadent civilization).
How is it clear? I don’t see how it’s clear. I don’t know much about Nazi poetry, actually.
How is it clear? I don’t see how it’s clear. I don’t know much about Nazi poetry, actually.[/quote]
Has nothing to do with poetry but the generally negative Nazi attitude towards any culture more advanced than folklore which I would have thought is pretty well known…
An intellectual is a man whose knowledge exceeds his intelligence.